ACEPC T11 MINI PC Was VERY Disappointing AVOID

#acepc #acepct11 #t11 #intelatompc #dontbuythis
ACEPC's T11 Mini PC was a totally disappointing experience!
I really should have known better! If it looks to good to be true, chances are is ins't as good as it appears at a glance.
This MINI PC was on a lightening deal at Amazon UK and was reduced by over a third in price. Originally it was on sale for around £155 and was reduced to £105 so i thought i would take a look at the Atom based quad core mini PC to see if it would be a suitable replacement for my ageing but still fully functional AMD AM1 based ITX media center.

Long story short the Broadcomm wireless chip in the ATOM chipset is no longer supported in the latest Windows 10 version 2004 and fails to install. Also to compound the problems i experienced the ATOM processor and only 4GB of RAM really isn't enough for a smooth or even vaguely enjoyable Windows experience.
I found apps took a long time to load and 4k video playback was unusable and ended up resorting to 720p in Youtube to get a good stutter free playback.

My biggest concern is that the "recommended" Windows 1909 base install has had the image and the group policies edited so it has disabled windows from updating both security and feature updates, and could potentially leave the end user with a compromised machine. In the days of Internet banking and lots of us now having to order goods online this is frankly unacceptable.

I have reached out to ACEPC for support and feedback on this and at present have not had any contact with them. Obviously if i receive any further input i will let you all know.

My advice - AVOID! Give this one a miss.
Maybe try one of their other newer models just not the T11 or T11 variants.
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[rogerlost]

These types of boxes usually have the OS instaled to the extremely slow internal SSD. In some cases the SSD is actually a lot slower than a mechanical drive. If you have a spare SSD you could try installing that into it and then installing W10 on the new SSD, that will improve loading of apps a lot.

[aqmohra]

Maybe it could benefit from a install of a light Linux OS like Mint Xfce?

[mpwaterhouse]

I saw this review earlier but was a bit slow removing this from my Amazon wish list but it turned out I was not disappointed in getting one given my use case. I ended up getting one from a relative in April 2021 who was elated that they found it on sale at $99 with a $10 coupon. I fired it up, patched it (not seeing any of the upgrade error messages - so maybe that particular issue has been fixed?) I put an old 320G laptop HD in for data, installed Steam (.. and yes the system is slow from an interaction point) . For me that is not an issue as I have been using it successfully as a headless game server (Valhiem currently) with no issues. Best of all is the lightweight power consumption so leaving it on as a game server is pretty optimal.

[bkucenski]

I have the "pro" version of the t11 and the updates are installing fine for windows pro. My plan is to use it as a basic web server for a project I'm developing.

Update: I was pleasantly surprised that after doing the Windows updates it actually runs nicer than it ran out of the box. It seemed a little sluggish but now is quite responsive. My monitor I'm using with it is only 720p. I've got IIS, PHP 7.4 and MySQL installed and it's running fine.

For $130 it's certainly workable as an internet appliance.

[peplegal]

Just curious : Is there a NATIVE SATA for this hard-drive...or it's just an USB-to-SATA internal interface ?
(how does the hard-drive appear in the Device Manager ?)

[RicardoCifuentesYepes]

Thanks for the review Mike, I wanted to get that PC for GTA V. LOL. Seriously, Why several "ACME brand" manufacturers pretend to see users the fools face and give them something that doesn't work properly?

[AndyMitchellUK]

The biggest problem here (as is with many mini PCs) is that it's using bat-shit slow eMMC. It's literally an SD card soldered to the board so speeds are absolutely horrendous. It's a shame because the CPU with 4GB ram isn't a bad combo, it's just massively let down by the atrocious boot drive speeds. They really need to stop using eMMC as it's so painfully slow.

[CyberWorld]

Works perfectly for me although it was horrendously slow at the start while using Microsoft edge I downloaded Google chrome and now the performance is improved by a mile. I would say it’s really good considering the price I bought it for . I’ve had it for a week now hopefully it’ll last.

[crshm]

I have one and sometimes the unit powers on enabling me to use Windows for approximately a certain amount of time before it shuts down and powers off but now I can't power it on and the light blinks red upon pushing button

Can I have some insight into this issue and how do I resolve this?

[wildlifesnapper]

Inch and a half, that's cool, it will stop my table from wobbling when I shove it under the leg!!

[artisan]

Kind of late to the party, but I bought one of these last year and when I try to power it up now, it's just a red light. I did try (per a video from ACEPC) to discharge the bio, but that didn't help. Anyone else have a problem like this? Just a solid red light?

[aidenCBR]

general rule of thumb, avoid anything with intel Atom processors, in 2020 they are simply not good enough, as they arent even being manufactured anymore, this means, at best, you are getting a mobile processor that is quite a few years old, and even new these chips were no good.

[Phil]

I've been using a T11 for just over a year as a file server with an external drive, and a few other things such as emulation. You're right it is very slow, but I think the problem is that the advertising suggests that it can do more than it actually can. I also did a fresh install of Windows 10, did manage to find some drivers but had a few issues getting everything installed, there was still something in device manager with a warning which I disabled. However everything has been working fine for over a year including all Windows updates.
Speaking of Windows updates they are painfully slow, I think either the CPU or internal storage is too underpowered compared to the more powerful hardware Win10 was designed for. That being said, navigating the OS and less demanding applications is reasonably quick.
I think some of the issues with video playback are more software related - it handled Netflix 1080p without any noticeable stutter, and 1080p Youtube videos worked fine in Edge (the old version pre-chromium) but in Chrome they would have a lot of dropped frames. Also playing 1080p videos in Media Player Classic caused a little bit of stutter. I think there could be an issue with some applications not using hardware acceleration for video but can't be sure, but I wouldn't recommend this for media playback even at 1080p, let alone 4K.

[daveh]

Actually got one of these on sale.
It takes about 3 Mississippi's to open a web browser or a YouTube video. So the processor or some combination of things causes a slight hitch in its giddy up. It's fine after that.
It was easy to set up and didn't give me any issues though.
I'm not a computer guy any more so I'm probably more forgiving of it's craptitude than the average guy. The last time I was on the cutting edge of tech, win98 and dial up was still a thing.

[PaulBakewell]

Really like Mike's "I really don't like this product" videos the best. I have had quite a few "plugged in to the TV boxes" (HDMC as some people call them) over the years and found the Nvidia Shield the best by a long way. But would like a good quite/ very small PC if could find one.

[RG-Zeldaplayer]

Bought one of these at the start of the pandemic so that we could attach a webcam and skype relatives from the living room TV, do online classes through it and I had intended to use it with an attatched hard-drive as a media server. The computer wound up being far too sluggish to use for any of what we intended and now it sits unused under the TV. I have wondered whether a different OS might speed things up a bit.

[aguelomultimedia]

Second alternative; remove completely W10 and install Debian 10 Buster (This is my case). Or take the easier way; linux mint with XFCE or ubuntu. I tested it with Linux MX and it works properly as well.
I didn't try cinnamon, so I can not tell how it looks & performance.
PD. Forget the Arch linux distro (I like it) and derivatives due to its rolling release; I checked it on this T11 and once updated... continuous bugs on boot and no login shown. (no marked to check again ;) ) Obviously I tried it two times, no more.

[normanelipsis]

I find your video more than a little misleading. I'm not sure why Windows Updates were disabled on your actual device but instead of enabling them just wiped the factory image off of the device (which contains all the necessary drivers), installed a vanilla copy of Windows and then failed to find correct drivers. I also don't think you put enough effort into looking for drivers - I don't think it's reasonable to expect a neat little section for downloading drivers from the website of what is essentially an OEM Chinese manufacturer. You could find numerous other models of Atom-based devices which are effectively the same hardware platform just with a different logo on the case. So running a search for "acepc wifi driver" is obviously not going get you very far...

Furthermore, I don't think it's reasonable to expect Chrome to play 4K videos on a machine like that, since Chrome does not use HW acceleration for video playback. You'd have better luck with Edge (not that I am recommending to use Edge)

It would appear that you've purchased a low-power device and fell for the (relatively generic for Chinese OEMs) marketing, where they show you multiple windows running on that machine with things like spreadsheets or graphic editing software. In reality this device is much more suitable for media playback/streaming from servers such as Plex using a client like Kodi - if you get an Atom-based machine for a 100 quid and expect it to replace your desktop computer, you're going to have a bad time...

Additionally, for a "tech channel" you seem to be quite reluctant to play with tech. I'd encourage you to spend an afternoon and install Linux on this box, you might be surprised with both the process itself and the results of it

[dvc]

I got mine on a lightning deal too. I've had it running pfSense as a firewall for nearly a year. This wasn't without it's problems such as driver compatibilities between FreeBSD and the NIC but all in all it did a job. I agree it seems fairly useless as a more regular computer device. I'm now looking for alternative use-cases. I may just end up running a linux CLI distro as a lightweight server.

[mrbrittas]

hi mike i dont know much about these, got the chance to buy a acepc ak3v for £90 used but hardly usedlooks great. my question is it likely to be any better than this? use will be retro games emulator mp3 downloading, youtube. cheers pal if you have time to reply